The developer of Fallout 4, Bethesda Softworks, may already have begun work on a sequel to the blockbuster game. That's according to the Game Rant, which cited an Instagram post by Ryan Alosio, the voice behind Fallout 4's Deacon, as the source of the rumour.

"Internally there is movement gearing up for the pre-production of Fallout 5... obviously I can't get into any details at all right now but it will all be a very interesting journey moving forward," he was reported as writing on the social media site. The post has since been deleted and replaced with a similar one without the Fallout 5 revelation.

It comes three weeks after Fallout and Elder Scrolls designer Todd Howard revealed that Bethesda was working on three new long-term projects. "We actually have three longer-term projects that are all — we'll talk about them at a much future date — they're different from anything we've done before while also being a Bethesda style game: big and crazy, but in many ways different from what we've done before," he was quoted as saying by Polygon.

Fallout 4 garnered near-universal acclaim from critics and was named game of the year at Dice Awards last month. Bethesda reported $750m (£530m) in sales in the first 24 hours of the launch of the game in November last year, making it both a commercial and critical success.